If you were to open your medicine cabinet right now, there’s a fair chance that you’d find at least one bottle of vitamins alongside the painkillers, plasters and cough syrup. After all, people are definitely buying vitamins: in 2020, the global market for complementary and alternative medicines, which includes multivitamin supplements, had an estimated value […]

Health Minister, Dr Joe Phaahla, has called for vigilance as the country has recorded two laboratory-confirmed cases of cholera imported from Malawi. UPDATE 24 FEB ’23: South Africa records its first cholera death, linked to the recent cases. According to the department, the cases were confirmed in two sisters, who had travelled together from Johannesburg […]

The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development has confirmed a new outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF) on a farm in Gauteng. The department said the farm has been put under quarantine and the Provincial Veterinary Services instituted forward and back-tracing investigations to identify any properties that could have had direct or indirect […]

South Africa’s Health Minister, Dr Joe Phaahla, says for now, the SA government will not impose any internal restrictions as a result of the emergence of a newly found sub-variant of the COVID-19 virus. The first instance of the XBB.1.5 sub-variant was detected in South Africa in December and reported earlier this month. Phaahla explained […]

South Africa’s Department of Health (DOH) says it is in consultation with scientists over a highly transmissible variant of the COVID-19 virus. According to local media reports over the weekend, SA has found its first case of the variant. “[The department] has been alerted about this highly transmissible XBB.1.5 variant and is currently in discussions […]

Winston Fani (35), an unemployed blind gentleman, lives in Mfuleni, Cape Town, with his lovely wife, Busi (43), who is also considered legally blind, and their faithful guide dog, Gladys. Winston was born with glaucoma, a progressive eye disease and from the age of 12, has lived life in total darkness. Like so many South […]

Cabotegravir is still unaffordable after two years. By Daniel Steyn.   In 2020, pharmaceutical company ViiV Healthcare announced that a bimonthly injection of its new drug, cabotegravir, prevents HIV infection. More than two years later, the drug is still unaffordable in countries where HIV is highly prevalent. Local medicines manufacturer Aspen Pharmacare says that licences […]

The South African government may not see them – children with huge hearts but twisted backs and crumpled spines – but fortunately, there are human angels in SA like Boikanyo, The Dion Herson Foundation, The Paige Project and Rotary Club of Rosebank who not only see these children and their caregivers… but are bringing hope, […]

Over 71,000 members of the youth volunteer group ‘WE ARE ONE’, headquartered in South Korea, have set a new Guinness World Records™ title for the most people to sign up online as blood donors within 24 hours… and they were supported by hundreds of South Africans in SA. ‘WE ARE ONE’ which forms part of […]

ALL RISE, a non-profit organisation and registered law clinic for climate and environmental justice, has commissioned an important independent report entitled ‘Everything for Dust: the Collective Trauma of Opencast Coal Mining on Residents in Somkhele, KZN’ which lays bare the collective trauma experienced as a result of opencast coal mining. This report will be released […]

South Africa’s Professor Tulio de Oliveira has received huge praise at the World Health Summit in Berlin, Germany. The globally acclaimed bioinformatics scientist has been singled out for his sterling genomic sequencing work that led to the discovery of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. SA’s Health Ministry congratulated Prof de Oliveira who has been “praised […]

Nosizile Bonakele waits on the bank of the Xhora Mouth river at 6am to catch a small rowing boat and begin what will be a day-long journey to access the nearest government clinic. For residents of Xhora Mouth in rural Eastern Cape, a trip to the closest government clinic is a day-long journey. HIV, TB, […]

It’s hard to imagine a time when “coronavirus” wasn’t a household word. But for a long time, this family of viruses had merited very little attention. Believed to be ubiquitous among animals and avian species, the first coronavirus to infect and cause disease in humans was only isolated and identified in the 1960s. Seven human […]

South Africa has recorded its second fatal case of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) following vaccination with the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 jab, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) announced on Monday. “Causality assessment of the reported case was conducted by the National Immunisation Safety Expert Committee (NISEC) using the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) […]

An Alberton mom has won a significant court battle against her medical aid scheme forcing it to pay for an expensive drug that her three-year-old son needs to treat a rare inherited genetic disorder. A mother desperate to save her son has secured an interim order forcing Medihelp Medical Scheme to pay for an expensive […]

This week Carte Blanche explores the psychological impact of pandemic rules – was the crisis management worth it in the end? South Africa’s top current affairs show meets parents who paid a high price at the peak of the pandemic. (Here’s the most up-to-date Carte Blanche this Sunday line-up.) « Our NICU story is sure to […]

South Africa has detected its fourth case of monkeypox through laboratory testing in a 28-year-old male from the Western Cape. According to the Department of Health, the patient has a travel history to Spain and returned to South Africa in the second week of August 2022. “A polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test was performed in […]

South Africa’s Department of Health and the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) will no longer issue the daily numbers of COVID-19 cases, hospital admissions and deaths due to a decrease in SARS-CoV-2 levels. It will instead be issued on a weekly basis. The department and the NICD had been reporting COVID-19 surveillance data on […]

It’s the great South African love story: the nation and their sport. At school, making the first team in any sport is a rite of passage and parents and teachers sacrifice everything for a win and prestige. But now, a new movement is taking root… Don’t miss this week’s episode of Carte Blanche – you […]

A family in Alexandra township is mourning the death of their 4-year-old child who died after being turned away from a clinic in Johannesburg. The child was injured on Wednesday in a car accident, but was unable to get admitted to the Alexandra Health Centre at 5 pm after security guards told the family the […]

Plants have directly contributed to the development of important drugs. The antimalarial treatment artemisinin, pain medication morphine, and cancer chemotherapy taxol are just three examples of drugs derived from plants. Africa is endowed with up to 45,000 plant species – about 25% of the world’s plant genetic resources. More than 5,000 plant species from this […]

The World Health Organisation (WHO) announced its plan to reconvene the Emergency Committee on monkeypox under the International Health Regulations as infections continue to soar globally… although at the time of publishing there have only been two confirmed cases in South Africa. In June, the WHO’s Emergency Committee resolved by consensus the outbreak does not […]

The first case of Monkeypox in South Africa has been confirmed, Health Minister, Dr Joe Phaahla, said during a media briefing in Pretoria on Thursday. The patient is a 30-year-old male from Johannesburg, Gauteng, who has no travel history, meaning that this cannot be attributed to having been acquired outside South Africa. Phaahla said: “Late […]

Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla is being called on to issue an immediate public apology to South Africans for his Department’s insults to those who opposed the draft health regulations relating to Covid-19. ‘Anti-progressive’, ‘instigating terrorism’ and ‘sabotage’ is how the Health Department officials called about 300 000 law-abiding SA citizens who exercised their democratic […]

Health Minister, Dr Joe Phaahla, has called for calm and vigilance after four cases of measles were detected in Gauteng, South Africa. These cases were found during routine surveillance activities aimed at responding to every suspected case of this vaccine-preventable disease. Four suspected cases of measles in Gauteng were detected in the last couple of […]